Legislation that’s been widely reported as an attempt to ban video sharing app TikTok from Tennessee colleges may not actually accomplish that.
The bill would block Tennessee colleges from providing access to video platforms that are owned by a company that’s either hosted or based in the People’s Republic of China.
Cosby Representative Jeremy Faison is sponsoring the legislation in the House, and he told members of the House Higher Education Subcommittee Monday night that TikTok may not be impacted after all.
“As I have spoken to people who have lobbied on that. They assured me that the company that was mentioned, TikTok, is not based in China so I don’t if there is currently one today that Americans are using that is based in China or operated in China. But if there was, this bill would certainly catch them and they wouldn’t be able to use it then,” said Representative Faison.
TikTok is not directly mentioned in the Representative Faison’s legislation, though the app was referenced directly by Senator Jon Lundberg during last week’s vote on the legislation in the Senate.
“Specifically two apps, this is TikTok and Wechat, so, we do not need to provide access on our university websites for that. Because our universities are conducting a great deal of research,” said Senator Lundberg.
TikTok is the seventh most used social media platform in the world. It’s owned by Chinese technology company ByteDance and based in the sovereign city-state of Singapore.
In the past few years, the video sharing app has faced scrutiny over concerns about data collection from the Chinese government and Congress voted to block access on federal devices last December.
Faison says his primary goal is to provide protections from the People’s Republic of China on college owned Wi-Fi.
Kingston Representative Monty Fritts echoed that concern before the subcommittee voted unanimously to send the legislation to the full Education Administration Committee.
“It is clear and evident to me that the communists in China want to do anything they can to disrupt our American way of life and any way that we can prevent that, it’s the right course of action,” said Representative Fritts.
If approved by the full House and Governor Lee, Representative Faison’s legislation would not impact a student’s access to social media sites based in China through a student’s own cell phone data.
